From left, Jennifer Sanchez, Christina Sajous and Renée Elise Goldsberry in “I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road.” The revival of this 1978 musical, directed by Kathleen Marshall at City Center, is part of the Encores! Off-Center series.Credit
Karsten Moran for The New York Times

When the sweet, spirited music stops, a smell of stale patchouli oil seems to waft from the stage at City Center, where a loving but creaky revival of the musical “I’m Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road” is being presented through Saturday as the last entry in the inaugural season of Encores! Off-Center. This pop-rock chamber musical from 1978, with book and lyrics by Gretchen Cryer and music by Nancy Ford, features a handful of still-vibrant songs about the tensions between the yearning for romance and the itch for self-fulfillment. But the long rap sessions between numbers — I use the term in the antiquated sense, of earnest soul baring — tend to sap the energy from the proceedings.

The production, directed by Kathleen Marshall, places the show firmly in period, which is unavoidable since its themes — of women’s self-empowerment and men’s ornery responses to it — are now mostly obsolete, at least in the specific terms they are addressed here. Bright ethnic-print hangings recalling the heyday of Pier 1 Imports have been hung to suggest a cozy New York club of the 1970s, wisely shrinking the large stage down to manageable size.

The central character, Heather Jones, portrayed by Renée Elise Goldsberry (Ms. Cryer originated the part), is a singer-songwriter rehearsing new material for her act. She’s outgrown the old stuff — all those easygoing love songs — and is fired up with enthusiasm about singing of where’s she at now. (The period lingo is catching.) Her state of mind is troubled, and maybe a little combative. She’s tired of trying to fit into the boxes that the men in her life have always put her in, and her new act is a cri de coeur for women to break out of their predetermined roles and create new lives for themselves — with or without men.

But Heather still hopes to impress her longtime manager and former lover, Joe (Frederick Weller), who has just breezed in from the coast and does not, at first blush, seem the kind of guy open to new ideas about the man-woman thing. “Honey, can you get me a ginger ale?” he casually asks one of Heather’s backup singers, who kindly obliges.

Ms. Goldsberry, seen on Broadway in “The Color Purple,” “Rent” and “The Lion King,” has a rangy, gorgeous voice that can sound steely, supple or classically pure as needed. Singing “Old Friend,” perhaps the show’s most memorably beautiful song, about the passing of time, the endurance of friendship and the elusive nature of love, she burrows deeply into its wounded heart to bring forth its emotional riches. Elsewhere she brings fiery humor and sass to songs like “Miss America,” a comical critique of that institution, and “Put in a Package and Sold,” whose subject I probably don’t need to explain.

Christina Sajous (“Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark,” “American Idiot”) and Jennifer Sanchez, playing Heather’s backup singers, also perform with skill and feisty energy, with Ms. Sajous spotlighted on “Strong Woman Number,” whose lyrics are typical in their brash assertion of women’s independence, and their acknowledgment of the discomfort it causes the men in their lives:

I know how to make a decision

My opinions are my own

And the one that I love thinks it’s wonderful

That I can get along alone

Pop songs can capture in amber ideas and attitudes that lose their urgency or currency with the years, so that when we hear them, we still respond with an emotional quickening that’s almost instinctive. That’s the case with many of the best in this show, with their bright, funky echoes of singers of the period like Linda Ronstadt and Carole King. “I’m Getting My Act Together” was originally produced by Joseph Papp at the Public Theater, where “Hair” and “A Chorus Line” were born, and its score is strongly influenced by those musicals’ consciousness-raising and confessional aspects.

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But the book by Ms. Cryer (mother of the actor Jon Cryer) shows its age more intractably. The long scenes in which Heather and Joe attempt to hash out their differences — and chew over old history — recycle endlessly the tensions between Heather’s need to be acknowledged as a fully developed woman and artist, and Joe’s tendency to view her as a singing doll. Echoing the lyrics of “Strong Woman Number,” Heather at one point demands to know just what it is that Joe professes to find so “wonderful” about her.

“Well, I really like your voice,” he replies. “It’s dynamite. And your delivery — very, uh, honest. And some of the stuff you write is very — telling. That’s good. I’d say that’s a plus. And I like your looks.”

“And what about my mind?” Heather snaps back.

“I like it. I like it very much,” Joe says, none too convincingly. “It’s, uh, full of surprises.”

“And what about my strength? Is that a turnoff?”

So it goes for long stretches of the evening, as Heather and Joe engage in obsolete arguments conducted in often quaintly anachronistic slang. It doesn’t help matters that Ms. Goldsberry, for all the expressiveness of her singing, never seems to locate the core of anger and despair that drives her character’s determination to shed her old skin and step into a tougher new one. She remains too pleasant and pliable throughout, making the peculiar passage in which Heather makes savage sport of Joe’s wife’s suicide attempt seem entirely out of character.

Mr. Weller, meanwhile, doesn’t seem to be trying to humanize his character. Admittedly, as written, Joe is mostly a punching bag, a combination of Dagwood Bumstead and Archie Bunker incongruously retailing anti-feminist dogma in ankle boots and bell bottoms. But Mr. Weller’s pinched, artificial performance tends to emphasize the hoary nature of his dialogue.

“I’m Getting My Act Together” was a long-running hit Off Broadway, moving on from the Public Theater and ultimately playing more than 1,100 performances. It struck a reverberant chord at the time, when questions of the changing roles of women in American culture were matters of heated concern. They remain so today, but the conversation often focuses on how women with established careers can maximize their potential at work while raising a family and pursuing several fulfilling hobbies. Instead of being asked to fetch ginger ale, today’s women are more likely to be wondering how they can find a couple of free hours in a frantic week to bottle their own.

Encores! Off-Center: I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It on the Road